The latest leaks about Google's clandestine political censorship are fascinating — but they're not going to knock anyone's socks off for shock factor. Who, at this stage, does not know what Google is up to?

Former Google employee Zachary Vorhies told Project Veritas that he spent a year collecting documents that prove Google uses a politically biased "fringe ranking" system and maintains a "blacklist" of undesirable websites.

Surprise, surprise! Our Silicon Valley overlords have "deboosted and deranked" websites that fall foul of its own agenda.

Coverage of Vorhies' leaks has been minimal, with the exception of right wing websites, many of which found themselves banished to the "blacklist." Liberal media has mostly ignored the leaks. This is primarily because Project Veritas is led by arch-conservative James O'Keefe and they are naturally loathe to cover any information he brings to light, regardless of how legitimate it might be.

The group has uncovered some enlightening information in the past; most embarrassingly, it caught a CNN reporter admitting that the Russiagate story, which consumed American media for the better part of three years, was "mostly bullsh*t" but that it had been "incredible" for ratings.

The Daily Beast did cover the leaks — but with the sole purpose of questioning Vorhies' credibility. The guy, it appears, is a pusher of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who has dabbled in Pizzagate and has written some anti-semitic tweets. Even O'Keefe acknowledged this, tweeting on Wednesday that "not every source is a perfect angel."

If his information is accurate, Vorhies' personal interests shouldn't be relevant. Then again, when it was revealed that the DNC rigged the 2016 primary against Bernie Sanders, the only thing CNN and friends wanted to talk about was Russia.

The media may have spent three years bloviating about powerful foreign entities influencing their elections, but Google — perhaps the most powerful corporation on earth in terms of its ability to influence human thought — gets a free pass. Seems legit.

Vorhies' leaks add to the growing cache of evidence that Google is not playing it straight when it claims that political bias does not affect its search results. A Google employee has been caught admitting the company is trying to "prevent the next Trump situation." The tech giant has encouraged its employees to join "resistance" protests — and removed content critical of it from YouTube (which it owns).

Algorithms "don't write themselves" another concerned Google employee said last month, "we write them to do what we want them to do" — and what it wants them to do is clear as day.

There is a mythology that says Google, Facebook and Twitter are concerned only with censoring conservative views. O'Keefe even bemoans Google's "scary, progressive social agenda." There is some truth to that as far as social issues like abortion are concerned, but that's where Google's "progressive agenda" ends.

This idea stems partly from the fact that Google consistently ranks "left-leaning" sites like the New York Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN higher in terms of credibility than right-leanings websites. Some important context is needed here, though. The right-wing Breitbart considers CNN to be "far-left" — a classification the actual "far-left" would find hilarious, to say the very least.

We've known for years that Google actively de-ranks socialist websites and genuinely subversive left-leaning content — a category CNN and crew (which are as down-the-line centrist as it gets) do not come close to falling into.

Google is not a slave to "the left" — it's simply a slave to the status quo and neoliberalism. So, don't expect corporate media to start worrying about that any time soon.

Danielle Ryan is an Irish freelance writer based in Dublin. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Nation, Rethinking Russia, teleSUR, RBTH, The Calvert Journal and others. Follow her on Twitter @DanielleRyanJ

Reader Comments

What is shocking is not what google is doing, but how many muppets continue to use their services and products. 1) Check your dns, make sure it is not googles. 2) Uninstall their browser & email apps. 3) Block script in webpages and change search engines. 4) Contain unrooted android devices with a firewall to block connect attempts or root with open source www.distrowatch.com. The same efforts can also easily get rid of fb, amazon, instagram, microsoft etc.

The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.